


An Unexpected Visitor

by fruitbattery



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Shenanigans, cannibalism cw, kind of, marius please a brain cell...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23730505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitbattery/pseuds/fruitbattery
Summary: The Aurora is harboring a potentially very sinister, and certainly unwanted, new guest. Marius sets out to set it right.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84





	An Unexpected Visitor

Marius is standing in a fairly empty room, and he knows three things. One, Ashes is dead on the ground, with their throat ripped out. Two, no one else is in sight. Three, they… aren’t really bleeding as much as they should be.

_ Shit. Shit, fuck, and also balls. Ass. Cunt? Motherfucker? GOD DAMMIT.  _ Marius knows this isn’t good. Ashes’s neck is already reforming, their limbs twitching weakly and air sputtering into their lungs, but he knows what it means when someone’s throat has been ripped out. He knows the rest of the crew’s trauma, even if he was never privy to the source of it directly. He takes off down the hall at a sprint, following the faint dribbles of blood on the floor, and ignoring Ashes’s weak groan of surprise.

He needs to find  _ her _ before she “finds” anyone else.

  
  


Just as Raphaella is putting the finishing drops of solvent into a beaker, she hears pounding footsteps streak past her lab. Her brows quirk in interest and she caps the beaker, pulling off her gloves and heading for the door. Opening it, she catches the tail end of Marius and his boot belts disappearing around the corner. She whips out her wings, and, flapping wildly in the narrow corridor, catches up to him easily.

“Marius!”   
  
“Raphaella.”

“Where are you going so quickly?”

“I, uh. I think Carmilla might’ve found her way back onto the ship. I’m following this trail of blood.” He points down at the floor, where a tiny speck of blood can be seen. Raphaella can feel her eyebrows raising.

“...Right. And what evidence do you have?”

He splutters for a second. “I found Ashes on the ground with their throat ripped out. I need to find Carmilla before she gets to anyone else, please, so let’s either walk and talk or split up.”

“Alright.” She considers the situation, and something seems… off. “Where’s Ashes?”

“Last I saw them, they were on the ground outside the main control room.” She nods and sets off towards there, Marius’s faint indignant spluttering following her for a bit, but she doesn’t care. She’ll get to the bottom of this.

  
  


Tim pokes his head out a door as Marius walks by, still scanning for blood. “Hey, Doc! What’s got you all pensive?”

Marius doesn’t look up– the blood is getting harder to spot. “Hunting Carmilla.”

“Mind if I join you? My eyes have a UV setting, I can see where the blood is. And that’s the only reason I had that upgrade installed.” If he’s trying to put something down, Marius isn’t picking up, and so he lets Tim join him in silence. With his superior blood-spotting skills, Tim naturally ends up taking the lead, and the two end up heading for a part of the ship Marius isn’t sure he’s ever explored.

Their laser focus on the floor, naturally, has some downsides. Namely, that Marius hears Tim shout in surprise about half a second before Marius walks right into him, and it’s only the sturdiness of whatever Tim had hit that keeps them both from toppling over. As it turns out, what Tim has hit is the Toy Soldier, standing in the middle of the hallway.

“Hello Doctor, Hello Tim! What Can I Do For You?”

Marius is still behind Tim, but he can  _ hear _ the eyeroll in his voice. And Tim can do a  _ great _ eyeroll. “Toy Soldier, we don’t have time for this. What are you doing here?”

“Jonny Told Me To Stay Here!”

“Alright, ignore him, you can move. Now–”

Marius has an idea. He interjects. “Soldier, would you like to help us find Dr. Carmilla? We think she’s on this ship.”

“I Would Be Happy To, Sirs! Lead On!” And it falls into step with them.

As what’s now a small posse makes its way down the hall, a faint growling drifts back towards them. Tim doesn’t seem to notice, but it makes Marius’s hair stand on end. Even more than it does already! He can’t help but think that it sounds a little like Jonny, but he’s  _ never _ heard Jonny make that noise before. It makes him really nervous.

Rapid footsteps behind them. Marius turns around to see Ivy, looking more panicked than he’s ever seen her. Ah, shit. 

“What was that you said about Carmilla?” She can’t seem to keep her feet still, so she’s rocking back and forth, and she’s clutching her book so tightly to her chest it looks like she’s trying to fuse with it. 

“Oh, ah, Ivy, don’t worry…” Behind Marius, he can sense that Tim and the Soldier have stopped as well, and he feels Tim’s eyes boring into his back. (He  _ needs _ to ask Raphaella if that was a setting she’d added.) He  _ knows  _ Tim is imploring him to do  _ something, _ but what?

The Toy Soldier answers that for him. “We Are Hunting Her Down! Marius Thinks She May Have Boarded The Ship.”

Marius winces. It’s never been one for subtlety. Or tact. Ivy withdraws even further into herself, and Marius finds himself placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Hey. We’re gonna find her, alright? We’re stronger than she is. She doesn’t know me or Tim at all, and the Toy Soldier knows not to follow any of her orders– right, Soldier?”

It nods enthusiastically, and Marius continues. “Well, either way, we won’t let her hurt you. If you’d like to hide as far away from down there–” he points towards the direction they’re walking, the same direction the growls are coming from– “I understand. And if you’d like to come with us, we’ll protect you.”

Ivy walks forward a few steps until her face is in Marius’s chest, and he squeezes her tight. She doesn’t respond, but after a minute she steps back, and Marius lets go immediately. She looks at him and Tim and the Soldier, determination in her eyes.

“Let’s go.”

  
  


Nastya is hurrying down the hall as fast as her legs will take her. She’s only heard that tone of growl from Jonny a few times before, and none of them have been good times. Beside her, the steady, reassuring beat of Brian’s shoes keeps pace easily, and she finds herself cursing her short legs. She would  _ like _ to see for herself what’s wrong with Jonny. She can’t bear to hear him like this, and neither can Brian. It’s a bad omen, that’s for sure.

They round a corner and are confronted with what looks like a ragtag squad of vigilantes, if vigilantes stared at the ground or shook like leaves. Ivy is doing the shaking, Tim and Marius are doing the looking at the ground, and the Toy Soldier is… being the Toy Soldier. So, it’s standing in the back and waving enthusiastically at her and Brian.

“Hello, Friends!”

The other three look up, with mixed expressions of horror and resignation, and Nastya knows why they’re here like a punch to the gut. Next to her, she knows Brian does too. She swallows, croaks a little, swallows, tries again.

“Is that her?”

Marius nods, impossibly grim. The only door in this stretch of corridor is pretty much exactly in the middle of the two groups, and Nastya knows it opens inwards with the hinge on Marius’s group’s side. So she draws her gun, and indicates that she’ll be first into the room. Marius and Tim nod, Tim drawing his own pistol just in case. Nastya reaches the door and, on a silent three-count, kicks it open.

The door is not locked, and as it swings open, in the dim light from the hallway, Nastya can make out the outlines of two people, crouched near the back wall. Then she shoots, and there are two people slumped against the back wall instead.

No one dares to breathe as Tim creeps closer, snaking his arm through the doorway and fumbling for a light switch. The harsh bulb flickers on.

Jonny d’Ville is slumped backwards, blood trickling from a chest wound. Some sort of… animal leg has fallen out of his hand onto the floor, and it’s got bite marks. Next to him is a figure Nastya’s never seen in her life. He’s tall and tan, with a skinny face and a fairly full beard and mustache, his teeth chipped and his whole face absolutely caked in gore. He bleeds from a single wound, also to his chest. Nastya takes a moment to admire her shooting, but the pressing issue is: Who the fuck is this man, and what is she looking at?

Marius, after spending a minute looking like he’s just woken up from a nap, clears his throat. “Ah. Um. I may… have overestimated the situation. Toy Soldier,  _ what _ is going on?”

“Well, I Saw Jonny And That Man Run By. Jonny Was Chasing Him, And I Wanted To Help, But He Told Me To Stay Put, So I Did!”

Marius gapes at the Soldier, everyone else gapes at Marius, and Jonny and the mysterious stranger gape on the floor, eyes vacant, although Nastya can hear the soft shifting noises of his ribs knitting together. She lets out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“So. It  _ wasn’t  _ the doctor?”

Marius won’t look at her. “I. Guess not?”

She sighs. Fucking hell, she has to do  _ everything  _ around here. “God damn it, Byron, you really fucked up.”

He nods. “Yeah, I–”

She shoots him, and crosses the room to Jonny, who’s started to wake up. As soon as he’s pretty much conscious, looking like his old grumpy self, she can’t  _ not _ throw her arms and herself around him. Just for a moment. She yells at him into his chest. “God damn it. You’re alive, and. You’re alive. You’re okay. You are okay, right?” 

Jonny sits up groggily. “I… yeah. I am. What happened? Not that I object to seeing all you fuckers, but I was having a  _ moment _ !”

“A moment? What the hell is that supposed to mean? We thought you were– were–”

Nastya doesn’t have to come up with what she thought he’d been, because right then a pair of footsteps become audible, running down the hall towards them at breakneck speed. Jonny groans. “Oh, fantastic, more– wait, how many of you chucklefucks are even  _ here _ ? What the hell happened?”

The rest of the group awkwardly shuffles into the room, with Raphaella and Ashes coming in last and out of breath. Jonny pushes himself laboriously to standing. “Alright. You. Explain what happened.” 

He’s pointing at Raphaella, who’s clearly annoyed at his bluntness, but answers anyway. “I saw Marius sprinting past my lab, so I came out to see what was happening. Marius said he thought the Doc had boarded the ship, and he thought she’d killed Ashes, so I went to investigate. I found Ashes, and, well. Ashes?”

“Yeah. That guy–” they point to the man in the corner– “ripped my fucking throat out, the fucker. No idea how he got on the ship, no idea how the fuck he overpowered me, no idea how or why a seemingly human dude would want to  _ eat my flesh.  _ ‘Cause he  _ chewed _ and  _ swallowed _ . But there you have it.”

Jonny has his thinking face on– specifically, the one that indicates he doesn’t like the conclusion he’s come to. “You.” He points at Marius, who’s getting up off the floor at this point. “What evidence, exactly, did you have for thinking  _ Doctor fucking Carmilla _ was on this ship?”

All eyes on him, Marius gets the rest of the way to his feet. “Well, Ashes’s throat was ripped out, and they weren’t really… bleeding as much as they should’ve been? So, I just kind of had to assume their blood had been drunk! Right? Isn’t that a reasonable assumption?”

Nastya can’t contain herself. She steps forward. “Marius. How many years have you been with this crew? Actually, don’t answer that. How have you  _ never noticed that Ashes always bleeds slowly?  _ The Doc messed with their blood to compensate for their lungs! Space Jesus Christ, Marius!”

The Toy Soldier pipes up. “I Could Have Told You WHat Happened If You’d Thought To Ask, Marius!”

“Shut  _ up. _ ” 

Marius is looking at the floor again, but this time he doesn’t look determined. He just looks guilty. Seeing Jonny about to speak up again, probably laying into Marius the same way Nastya wants to, Brian steps from behind Nastya. He’d been helping her with repairs in MJE, she knows, so he’s being truthful and polite when he speaks. “Jonny, please. Marius doesn’t have the same perspective as us, yeah, but he  _ wanted to help us. _ Yes, vampires don’t tear throats out, and yes, he somehow hasn’t noticed Ashes’s bleeding habits for hundreds of years, but that doesn’t mean he did this maliciously. And I would like everyone to stop blaming him,  _ now. _ ”

Ivy’s hand reaches out of the crowd to squeeze Marius’s shoulder. He puts a hand up to squeeze it back, and just like that, Nastya can feel the tension leave her body and leave the room. She knocks Jonny’s side bodily, in the way only a sibling can. “So. What were you doing? All this–” she indicates the rest of the Mechanisms, who are in various states of ‘awkwardly leaning against the wall’ and ‘slinking out the door’– doesn’t change the fact that I heard you  _ growling _ a minute ago. What gives?”

Jonny actually looks a little embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, I have no idea how he got here either. I just saw some dude sprinting at me on all fours, a sack of something bloody slung over his back, and, well, one thing led to another.”

Nastya nods in understanding. “You had a murderous chase through the halls of the ship.”

“We had a murderous chase through the halls of the ship.”

Ivy interjects at this point– she’s kneeling over the thankfully still-dead body of the bearded man. She pulls out what appears to be a wallet from his pocket. “Huh. His ID card says he’s named… Shia… LaBeouf? Huh. Weird name.”

Jonny shrugs. “Weird guy. I caught him eventually, and he offered me this.” He indicates the discarded leg. “Weird stuff. Think it might be from his species, actually.”

Ivy wrinkles her nose. “Gross, Jonny, I did not need to know that.” She continues poking around in the man's pockets.

From the doorway, Tim pipes up. “Well, Jonny, you’ve been saying you needed a subject for a new song… “


End file.
